


Meditations on Identity and Cheap Hamburgers

by narcissablaxk



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: A little bit of angst, Beverly deserved better, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, First Kiss, Humor, Romance, S2 Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:34:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25750672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: Bedelia du Maurier is one day away from leaving Baltimore and Hannibal Lecter behind. It would be easy to disappear and never come back. That is, until Beverly Katz shows her the pleasures that Baltimore (and her company) have to offer.
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Beverly Katz
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Meditations on Identity and Cheap Hamburgers

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as crack, but, in typical fashion, this ended up being a study of identity and understanding. However, my point remains the same - Beverly Katz deserved a girlfriend, and I stand by that.

There was something bland and depressing about the BAU, Bedelia thought grimly, watching Jack Crawford rise from his seat beside her and retreat down the hall, where the clear glass held the rest of his team, all engrossed in their own assignments, worker bees serving their leader. She supposed she should go – her next stop was Hannibal’s, to tell him that she wouldn’t be his psychiatrist anymore. The idea of the conversation sent goosebumps spreading over her skin.

Her time was running short, she knew. With Hannibal, you were tolerated for as long as you were useful or interesting. She was rapidly becoming uninteresting, mostly in part because she refused to accept that Hannibal’s supposed friendship with Will Graham wasn’t codependence by another name. 

Still, contradicting Hannibal came with risks. 

She would have to leave Baltimore. Her home was packed already – if Hannibal chose to come looking for her tonight, or tomorrow, he would find nothing but a house full of ghosts. 

“Excuse me, are you waiting for someone?” 

A woman was standing in front of her, in jeans and a flannel shirt, of all things, long hair flowing out of a gray beanie. She looked down at Bedelia kindly, and then her face shifted. 

“Oh my God, you’re that shrink, right?” she asked, and she smiled, her face brightening. “Dr…Dr. something French, right? Hannibal Lecter’s shrink.” 

“I’m a psychiatrist,” Bedelia said stiffly, rising to her feet. “But yes.” 

“Beverly Katz,” the woman said, completely undeterred by Bedelia’s tone. She stuck out her hand, elbow completely straightened, far too friendly. After a moment, Bedelia took it. 

“Bedelia,” she replied. “du Maurier.” 

“Ahh, I knew it was French,” Beverly said with a sheepish grin. “Were you waiting for Jack? I can go get him for you.” 

The last thing she wanted was to sit beneath Jack Crawford’s scrutinizing gaze again. “No, no, I already spoke to him, I’m just –”

She didn’t have an excuse for why she was there, but Beverly seemed fine without one. “Hey, can I ask you a question?” she asked, pulling the beanie off of her head, her dark hair fluffy beneath it. 

“I suppose.” 

“You’re Hannibal’s therapist –”

“Psychiatrist –”

“What’s his deal?” the woman pressed on, her eyes glittering with genuine curiosity. Bedelia envied her her ignorance. It was better for her if she didn’t even have an inkling about Hannibal’s “deal.” Still, she looked so genuinely interested that she found herself trying to find a nicer way of saying that doctor-patient confidentiality forbade her from divulging anything. 

“I don’t mean like, clinically,” Beverly seemed to sense her hesitation. “I mean…he’s hard to read.” 

Bedelia smiled ironically. “That he is.” 

Suddenly, Beverly looked horrified. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m just here, chatting with you. You probably have somewhere to be, patients to see or something.” 

“No, no patients,” Bedelia reassured her. “Just an unsavory errand that I don’t want to run.” 

Beverly grinned and shrugged. “So don’t run it.” 

How tempting that was. But if Hannibal showed up for a scheduled session and found her home empty, she would definitely be considered rude. Rude was dead. 

“I haven’t gotten my car inspected in like…two years,” Beverly continued. “I just keep putting it off. Errands are for the birds.” 

“Isn’t that illegal?” 

“Privilege of working for the FBI,” Beverly said, like it was a secret. She waited, probably hoping that Bedelia would find that funny. When her face didn’t change, she shifted her bag higher on her shoulder. “Wow, you really are stressed out, huh?” 

Bedelia didn’t have the heart to tell her this was just how she always was. 

“Tell you what,” Beverly continued. “I’m going to put some of this stuff down, and then we’re getting out of here.” 

“We’re what?” 

But Beverly was already walking away from her, and her question went unanswered. For a moment, paranoia washed over her. Maybe this woman was just pretending not to know her, maybe Hannibal had already been by her house and knew she was planning to run. Maybe she was going to take her to Hannibal. 

And then she swung open the door at the end of the hall, spotted someone just out of sight, and shouted “Oh, you opened the bowels without me? That’s my favorite part!” 

There was _no way_ Hannibal was working with her. 

Still, it was presumptuous of her to just assume that Bedelia would stick around and go with her, wherever she planned on taking her. It assumed they had a level of rapport that strangers simply didn’t have, and frankly, it implied a rapport that Bedelia didn’t have with anyone at all. 

For reasons completely unknown to her, she was still standing in the same spot when Beverly came back, coat buttoned and hat back on her head. Her hair had been meticulously fixed while she was out of Bedelia’s sight. 

“Let’s go, Doc,” she said, offering Bedelia her arm like they were about to go skipping down the Yellow Brick Road. When Bedelia stared at her incredulously, she raised her eyebrows. “It’s snowing outside. Don’t want you tumbling down the steps in those shoes.” 

Bedelia wordlessly slipping her hand into the crook of Beverly’s elbow. 

“They look expensive,” Beverly continued, glancing down at them. 

“They were,” Bedelia said. 

She laughed, as if Bedelia had picked up the conversational bait and delivered a devastating rhetorical blow. The infectious sound of it almost made her smile. 

It had started snowing outside, in earnest. Bedelia was starting to regret not wearing a coat – but her trip to the BAU was supposed to be quick, and then she would be at Hannibal’s before the snow hit. Still, Beverly pressed closer to her when they got to the steps, intent on protecting Bedelia from falling down the icy steps, her own sensible boots sure and confident. 

Beverly led her to a maroon Nissan Sentra, a dent in the back bumper. She opened the passenger side door for her, holding onto her arm until Bedelia was settled into the seat. She turned away from her to check the inspection sticker on the windshield. 

Expired two years ago. 

Seeing that innocuous piece of trivia verified released a tight knot of tension in Bedelia’s gut that she hadn’t realized had been tightening since Beverly took her by the arm. So, it seemed like the woman was honest enough, so far. 

***

Beverly always considered herself a spontaneous person. Most of that had been carefully compartmentalized as she got older, as her sisters got more daring. She had filled the role of the eldest sibling the way she was supposed to, but out here, away from her family, she allowed herself to occasionally indulge in her whimsy. 

Though that whimsy didn’t usually mean essentially kidnapping adult women and putting them in her car. 

But Beverly was, at her core, a people pleaser, and seeing Bedelia du Whatever-her-name-was sitting on that chair alone had called out to her, much in the same way she felt like cheering up Will Graham when he was just standing at crime scenes, moping. 

Beverly turned on the car, cranking up the heater and directing the vents at her passenger, trying not to stare at her too much from the corners of her eye. Something told her Bedelia was smart enough to notice. 

Still, she chanced a few glances. Petite, blonde, sharp-featured. Bedelia was the refinement personified, a store mannequin come to life, or a magazine ad cut out of the pages and left to bloom into a person. 

And then Bedelia turned to her, ice blue eyes piercing into Beverly’s, and she cleared her throat and averted her eyes. 

“Miss Katz,” Bedelia finally spoke while they waited in silence for the car to warm up. “What are we doing?” 

Beverly tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “Usually when my friends are upset or frustrated by something, I take them to get some comfort food.” 

Bedelia turned her penetrating eyes out to the surroundings. “But we just met.” 

“You can be friends with people you just met,” Beverly countered. 

“Psychologically –”

“I mean, you can be _friendly_ ,” Beverly corrected hastily. “Friendly, not necessarily friends.” 

Bedelia raised her eyebrows, and Beverly suddenly wanted her gaze directed at her again. She looked almost amused. 

“What kind of food comforts you?” she asked when Bedelia didn’t speak. “You seem like a…fancy French cuisine type person. Gourmet shit only, you know?” 

“Gourmet shit?” Bedelia asked, and Beverly’s mouth dropped open gleefully. 

“ _Please_ cuss more often,” she said, putting the car in reverse and backing out of her parking spot. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Bedelia smiling. She remembered people telling her that she had a bright smile, especially when she was young, but she never really saw it. She smiled all of the time – how tiring must the sun get if you see it all of the time?

Seeing Bedelia smile was like watching falling stars.

***

They had been on the road for almost twenty minutes before Bedelia realized she had no idea where they were going. Fear seized her for a moment, squashed almost immediately after by Beverly reaching for the radio between them on the dashboard, pressing the volume button and letting the sounds dispel the silence. 

She was listening to some oldies station; Bedelia couldn’t be sure of the station name, since she usually despised listening to the radio, but the song playing was familiar in the way that a childhood memory was, old and dusty and nostalgic. 

With Beverly occupied by the icy roads, Bedelia took the opportunity to scrutinize her without any study in return. Initially, she had chalked Beverly up to some green, over-excited rookie with the FBI, but now, with her brow furrowed at the road, her fingers tapping on the steering wheel to the beat, she could see the lines of age around her eyes and mouth. She could see the experience in the set of her jaw. 

What she saw, in her professional opinion, was someone with eternal youth, and the beauty to match. As someone who constantly felt the weight of the world with keen intensity, it was bizarre to see someone exist in spite of it. 

“Take a picture,” Beverly said when the song ended, and the car was full of their silence again. “It’ll last longer.” 

“Where are you taking me?” Bedelia asked, letting the comment slide without responding. 

Beverly took her eyes off the road long enough to give Bedelia a mischievous smile. “Have you ever been to Campana’s?” 

Bedelia squinted at her. “I have no idea what that is.” 

Beverly looked thrilled. “Okay so this place makes the literal best burger I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. And I definitely ate my fair share of burgers as a kid.” 

“Burgers?” Bedelia repeated weakly. 

“Oh, yes, Miss French Name, I know you’re probably contemplating like ten ways that you can jump out of a moving vehicle right now, but trust me, okay, this is going to blow your mind. You’re going to get your brain matter all over my car.” 

Bedelia grimaced. 

“It’s a joke,” Beverly clarified. 

“I knew that,” Bedelia replied. 

“Sure you did,” Beverly replied, a chuckle at the edge of her voice. “That’s why your pretty, pretty face went even paler than it already is.” 

Bedelia didn’t speak, but shifted in her seat. After a moment, she cleared her throat. “So, Miss Katz, what’s a…forgive the expression, woman like you, doing in such a male dominated field?” 

“Dominating,” Beverly replied with a smirk. “I like solving puzzles, and these are the hardest puzzles I can find.” 

So, she was attracted to brain teasers, to things that she had to figure out, rearrange, and put together. Suddenly, Bedelia’s presence in her car made so much more sense. She smiled, turning to look out the window so Beverly couldn’t see. It had been so long since someone tried to put her puzzle together. 

***

They pulled up to Campana’s when the sunlight was just starting to fade into dusk, the sky painted a faint orange and pink against the bright white snow on the ground. Beverly pulled up to the drive thru (the whole place was only a drive thru anyway) and put the car in park behind a gigantic SUV in front of them. 

“Why psychiatry?” Beverly asked, free now to see Bedelia’s face without interruption, without distraction. 

The woman in question blinked and considered her answer – everything that came out of her mouth was always so carefully chosen, precise, oblique points that Beverly could just barely reason out if she was paying close attention. 

“I liked helping people,” she said finally, the words hollow and probably untrue. 

Beverly raised her eyebrows. “So become a doctor. Or a teacher.” 

“I liked helping the dangerous ones,” Bedelia continued. 

The cars in line inched forward, Beverly putting the car in drive and scooting up without taking her eyes off of Bedelia. There was always a veil that kept her blue eyes at a distance, like she was looking at them through a telescope. But now that veil was pulled away, shorn down and opened. 

“I wanted to take their darkness from them,” Bedelia said. “Or at least repackage it so they could understand themselves better.” 

“There is nothing worse than not knowing who you are,” Beverly replied. “Sometimes I still don’t know who I am.” 

“Me neither,” Bedelia answered quietly.

Beverly caught her gaze again, this time the veil completely gone, and lingered on the planes around her eyes, the sharp cheekbones, the just barely smiling mouth, the graceful curve of her in the passenger seat of Beverly’s crappy car. She wanted to reach over and put her hand over Bedelia’s – that seemed appropriate for the topic of conversation. 

Unless Bedelia thought she was being a sentimental, weird fool, and then the rest of whatever this was would be ruined, drenched in the terrible distance that Bedelia could bring to any situation with hardly any effort. It would be smarter to keep her hand to herself. 

And then Bedelia’s hand landed gently on her knee, light and gentle and….freezing. 

“Oh my God, your hands are _so cold_!” 

Immediately, all insecurity forgotten, Beverly reached for both of Bedelia’s hands, taking them in her own, far warmer hands. She held them tightly, rubbing them together, content to offset her initial idea of a romantic gesture by relying on logic. Bedelia watched her carefully, her hands forgotten, eyes on Beverly’s face, like she was learning precious information about her by observation alone. 

Probably she was, and Beverly was too caught up in the bright blue of her eyes to bother deciphering it this time. It felt like her gaze was slowly sapping the air from the car, and they would soon both suffocate. 

And then the car behind them honked, startling them apart, and Beverly realized that the car in front of them had pulled up and disappeared without her noticing. 

She pulled the car up, pleased that she would have to order and in doing so, could avoid looking at Bedelia for at least a little while longer, while she made sure her face wasn’t doing something ridiculous. 

“Two specials, please,” she said to the man behind the window, who grinned at her in recognition. He gave her a thumbs up and disappeared, closing the window behind him. 

Well, that wasn’t nearly enough time, Beverly thought ruefully. Instead of turning back to Bedelia, she unbuckled her seatbelt and carefully extricated herself from her coat, doing her best to make it look graceful, or at the very least, not a complete disaster. 

When she was finished, she took the coat and gently draped it over Bedelia’s lap, covering her almost bare legs, clad in only sheer tights that could not be any form of comfortable in a snowstorm. Bedelia let her do it, slipping her hands beneath the coat when it was settled. 

“You’re very kind to people you’ve just met,” she pointed out shrewdly. 

She was saved answering by the arrival of their food, two brown paper bags and two Styrofoam cups of steaming liquid. She kept it on her lap, unwilling to pass it over to Bedelia for inspection, and moved the car up to the little carport behind the building, where people parked and ate what they ordered. 

The burgers were wrapped in thin paper, the better to hold them with, set on top of a pile of salty, thick cut fries. Beverly passed Bedelia one of them, trying to keep her smile at bay when Bedelia simply moved her hands out of the way so Beverly could put the little container of food on her lap. 

“Do you want a fork and a knife?” Beverly asked with a grin, dissolving into laughter when Bedelia swatted her on the shoulder with the back of your hand. “I only aim to give the classy lady what she needs.” 

Bedelia rolled her eyes and scooped up the burger, her pinkies sticking out ridiculously, and raised her eyebrows at Beverly as if to say _“see?”_ Beverly raised her eyebrows at her and nodded at the burger. 

“Go on,” she said, her own meal still in its bag on her lap. 

Bedelia leaned forward and took a bite, trying and failing to keep her lipstick intact, and widened her eyes at Beverly as she chewed, her eyes full of surprise and delight. 

“Told you,” Beverly said, pulling out her own burger and taking a bite. “Brain matter all over the car.” 

Bedelia, still chewing, rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. 

***

It was well and truly dark by the time Beverly pulled up to Bedelia’s home in Baltimore, the radio playing once more, Bedelia warm and comfortable beneath Beverly’s coat. It wasn’t until she looked at her own front door that Bedelia remembered that she had planned on telling Hannibal that she wasn’t going to be his psychiatrist anymore today, so she could leave tomorrow before their scheduled session. 

That meant that no matter how much she enjoyed Beverly’s company, no matter how intrigued she was by the beautiful, strange woman sitting beside her, she would probably never see her again after tonight. 

It was just yet another thing that Hannibal had taken from her while allowing her to stay alive. 

Beverly parked the car, probably trying to decide what to do from here, and Bedelia couldn’t blame her. She didn’t really know what to do next either. 

“Does the FBI give you vacation days?” she asked, her voice quiet, turned toward the window, staring at her own home, already empty and abandoned. 

Beverly hummed. “Um, not really.” 

“That’s a shame.” 

Beverly furrowed her brow, the movement still discernible out of the corner of Bedelia’s eye. “Why is that a shame? Planning on taking me on an expensive European vacation? I’m flattered.” 

She chuckled, pleased at her own joke, but Bedelia didn’t say anything. It would be fun, she thought, to take Beverly with her when she left. At least the woman would keep her interest. It had been so long since someone surprised her, since someone tried to see her. 

Bedelia wondered how shocked Beverly would be if she kissed her, sitting in her car like a couple of teenagers. She figured she wouldn’t mind, considering the way she looked at her when she thought Bedelia couldn’t see. But the analytical part of her mind reminded her that doing so would be an unnecessary complication. 

But when would she have the opportunity to do something like this again? Never, if Hannibal had anything to say about it. 

It was that thought that prompted her to reach over the middle console and pull Beverly over to her side, the kiss gentle and soft and only a few moments. 

“Oh,” Beverly breathed in the aftermath, still leaning over the middle console, even though Bedelia wasn’t holding her there anymore. “Is this your way of inviting me inside?” 

Inside her home, with the furniture all covered and boxes slowly piling up by the door? No, that would prompt too many questions that she couldn’t answer without putting Beverly in a serious amount of danger. 

“Where do you live?” she asked instead. 

Beverly widened her eyes. “You want to go to my crappy apartment?” 

Bedelia wondered if she called her apartment crappy for her benefit. She looked back at her house, dark and empty, and then back at Beverly, eyes bright and smile tentative, full of life. Bedelia ached with loss already. 

“I want to go where you are,” she said truthfully, and Beverly leaned over and gave her another kiss, this one long and sweet, for her honesty. 

“Your wish is my command.”


End file.
